Pinedale (also spelled Pine Dale) () is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in McKinley County,

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 485.

Geography

Pinedale is in west-central McKinley County, by road northeast of Church Rock and northeast of Gallup, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

. It is served by Navajo Route 11. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Pinedale CDP has a total area of , of which , or 0.06%, are water. The community sits at the northern base of Fallen Timber Ridge and is drained by tributaries of the Puerco River, which flows westward through the northern part of the CDP, leading eventually to Gallup and thence to the Little Colorado River in Arizona.

Demographics

Pinedale was first listed as a census-designated place prior to the 2020 census.

Notable people

Paddy Martinez, the

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

man who discovered high-grade

uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...

ore that initiated the Grants, New Mexico, uranium mining boom, was born in Pinedale.

Education

Pinedale Chapter is served by three local school systems, they are

Gallup-McKinley County Public Schools Gallup-McKinley County Schools (GMCS) is a school district based in Gallup, New Mexico which serves students from Gallup and surrounding areas of McKinley County. History Prior to 1980, the district had of land. That year parts left to form t ...

. BIE operated school
Wingate Elementary SchoolMariano Lake Community School
and Wingate High School.

References

Census-designated places in New Mexico Census-designated places in McKinley County, New Mexico Unincorporated communities in New Mexico Unincorporated communities in McKinley County, New Mexico {{NewMexico-geo-stub